Unprofessional commentary on professional communication. Professional commentary on unprofessional communication.

February 2013

February 28, 2013

A man who will go unnamed has been flogging his book, in the title of which the weary word "amazing" appears. Yesterday, because the man is a shameless social media consultant, he posted on his Facebook page this dizzying Oscar video showing shameless Hollywood people calling one another (and one another's hair) "amazing."

I remarked that calling everything that's amusing "amazing" is a sign of a culture of salesmanship. I advised the author to distance himself from the term. Knowing, of course, that the author would not do any such thing.

Then some dude, not the author, accused me of being a curmudgeon.

"I love linguistic trends as much as the next guy," I replied. "They're entertaining, especially in spoken language. But I'm a writer, and one reason to write is to be remembered. If my writing is full of the linguistic fads of the moment, it'll be harder to read and will be taken less seriously as each year passes. I assume [the Amazing author] has the same interest in being understood and appreciated not just by the 'amazing'-inured audiences of today, but by the head-scratching audiences of tomorrow. Hence, my unsolicited advice to him."

February 27, 2013

Here's the "book trailer" that video producer Tim DuFour made for the book I helped write, Mark Weber's Tell My Sons.

Some days Mark is dying of cancer—last week he was on his back after a sepsis attack. Some days he's living of cancer—last night he kicked off an NHL hockey game. In any case, it's good to have this to help introduce him and his book indefinintely.

February 26, 2013

But if you're just playing with things on your desk, you might be interested to hear that executive communication consultant Leslie Gaines-Ross is "starting to wonder if thought leaderhsip is morphing into an entirely new terminology in this digital age—content provider."

Thought leadership, we hardly new ye!

Don't panic, dear reader. Leslie tells us on her blog that she and a friend talked and they decided that "anyone can be deemed a content provider but not everyone can be called a thought leader."

Her reasoning: "Most people on Twitter or Facebook provide content of sorts but it is not always unique or new or truly awe-inspiring."

She goes on to rank various types of communication as "chatter —> content provider —> thought leader —> original —> genius."

"It's hard to say what all this adds up to," she adds, "but the reputation of thought leadership as well as content provider needs a better definition. Just providing content ... is different than providing new thinking that leads people to think twice or act differently or even possibly change lives. Something to ponder."

February 20, 2013

As chairman of the Strategic Video Awards, sometimes I feel like a propaganda booster. So it does my heart good to remember that the really new thing about video is that it doesn't require megabucks to make or distribute. Yesterday, for instance, we looked at terrible videos on a huge budget. Here's a great video that, on a shoestring, transforms corporate hogwash into political fertilizer. (Thanks to insurgent Bill Sledzik for the steer.)

February 19, 2013

George Bernhard Shaw said of the bagpipes, “At least they don’t smell.”

I wish I could lavish such praise upon the Chivas Regal “Chivas Real Friends” films, which are currently placed front and center on the company’s website.

Alas, they do smell. Bad.

Let us attempt offset some of the scandalous cost of this unbelievably embarrassing content marketing project by learning something from it.

As you can see from the trailer, Chivas marketers hired Academy Award-winning short-film director Joachim Back, first-class production company Park Pictures and four professional Hollywood actors.

What you can’t tell from the trailer is how desperately insipid these movies are.

Each one begins with the four “Real Friends” sitting in a fancy lounge, looking and talking as if they’re deep into their third glass Chivas. (Really, Chivas? You wanna show guys drunk on your sauce? Well, it’s your money.) They’re engaging in some forced Swingers-esque banter, which in each case leads to a memory and the beginning of a yarn … and then we find ourselves in the flashback.

Because you can’t spoil a plot that's rotten to begin with: In “Here’s to Twinkle,” the shorter of the two films, one of the friends was sad over losing his girlfriend and the guys tried to cheer him up by taking him to an amusement park and surfing and playing basketball. But he was inconsolable until a little dog ran onto the basketball court and he cuddled it and a supermodel came along and thanked him for saving her dog and then kissed him and they went out on a date.

Normally, a plot description doesn’t do a movie justice. In this case, the movie doesn’t do my plot description justice. If you have seven and a half minutes of your life to waste, see for yourself.

Like, Chivas content marketing duders: People will take you as seriously as you take yourself—once. If you make a 60-second TV commercial about some well-heeled, well-dressed old buds drinking Chivas and cracking wise—well, you’ve shared your brand image without really slowing me down too much. But if you’re asking me to stop what I’m doing and watch a short film—well, I expect from your film what I would expect from any film: to be made to think, or, in the case of something you call “Real Friends,” to feel a genuine emotion.

The only emotions I feel watching these films are a rancid sort of amazement at how comprehensive their witless artificiality and disgust at the money they must have cost.

The other film, “Here’s to Big Bear,” is worse than “Twinkle,” and not only because it’s twice as long. Behold this classic tale of “real” friendship:

The four high-class boozers let their marinating minds drift back to a day when, for vague reasons, they got off a train in the middle of a desert in tuxedos. When a toothless, cackling old man tells them the next train isn’t coming for days, they set off hiking across the desert while lonesome strains of “Home on the Range” irrelevantly play. Our chapped and dusty heroes stumble upon a gas station and ask the mean old proprietor for water and are charged $50 for four bottles. Then they take their pants off and go hitchhiking in their boxer shorts. They’re finally picked up by a psychotic-looking trucker, who gets on the CB and says, “Big Bear got four in the trap.” Then Big Bear puts a CD and leads the guys in singing “Together in Electric Dreams.”

If you don’t believe me, watch the film. But you’re better off believing me, believe me.

I’m trying to get into the mind of the marketer who conceived of this bullshit. Here I go!: We want people to think of Chivas Regal as cool. We want them to think of themselves as cool for drinking it. So we’ll make a film showing people who think they’re cool and who are dressed cool drinking Chivas in a cool setting and telling cool stories about uncool moments in their otherwise cool lives.

But for all the money and human time “Real Friends” films waste, they reveal nothing more than the cynical and unimaginative and contemptuous minds of their creators.

February 18, 2013

It comes from bullshitters, honey. Get a load of a promo I received last week:

The Manager’s Phrase Book (Career Press) is a collection of thousands of ready-to-use phrases that will enable you to move into the ranks of today’s most competent managers. You will have control of any situation at a moment’s notice, regardless of your position in the corporate world. You will have all the weapons you need to succeed where vibrant, meaningful, appropriate, and, perhaps above all, precise language is required.

With this passport to success, you will begin a new game in which you are among the charismatic, the untouchable—the elite.